Zionism
Written By: Sarah Junejo
Jews were exiled from the land of
Israel by the Romans after they defeated the Jews in a 3-year war. The Jewish people never gave up hope that
they would someday return tot heir home in Israel. But for a long time, this desire for their homeland was just a
mere hope without any concrete plans to achieve it. In 1897, Theodore Herzl and Chaim Weizmann founded Zionism. Zionism is a political movement among Jews
holding that the Jewish people constitute a nation and are entitled to a
homeland. From 1917, it focused on the
establishment of a Jewish homeland or state in Palestine.
Until the rise of Zionism, most Jews
believed that they would only enter Israel with the coming of the Messiah or
the divine intervention. After Zionism
came into being, their hopes rose and many Jews who had abandoned Judaism began
to develop a new Jewish identity as a ‘nation’.
Before the 1890’s, there had been
attempts to settle Jess in Palestine, which was in the 19th century,
a part of the Ottoman Empire inhabited mostly by Christians and Arabs. Pogroms in Russia and Russian Poland led
Jewish philanthropists to sponsor agricultural settlements for Russian Jews in
Palestine in the 1870’s, resulting in a small group of immigrants from Russia arriving
in the country in 1882. This has become
known in the Zionist history as the First Aaliyah (“ascent”). The second aaliyah was incurred in 1905,
which is also marked by a revolution and led to a large immigration of Jews
from Russia to Israel.
There had also been several Jewish
thinkers such as Moses. Hess argued for
the Jews to settle in Palestine as a means of settling the national
question. He proposed a social state in
which the Jews would be distributed land through the process of “redemption of
soil” which would transform the Jewish community into a true nation in which
Jews would occupy the productive layers of society rather than being the
intermediary non-productive merchant class, which is how he perceived European
Jews.
More than 50 years after the
founding of Israel, and after more than 80 years of conflict over the territory
that is now Israel, the great majority of Jews in all countries continue to
regard themselves as Zionists and to support Israel in all circumstances. Some liberal or social Jews outside Israel,
as well as some Orthodox Jewish communities, still oppose Zionism as a matter
of principle. Most argue for a secular
binational state in which Arab and Jews live together.
Majority of Jews in all countries
continue to publicly support Israel in all circumstances. Some elements of Orthodox Judaism remain
antizionist, although important Orthodox groups have changed their position
since 1948 and now actively support Israel.
Today, the overwhelming majority of Jewish organizations are strongly
pro-zionist.
During WW1, the Zionist movement
gained some support from the British.
The British promised them their homeland if the Zionists helped them
defeat the Ottoman Empire. The British
promised the Arabs to limit Jews to Palestine mere months after the Balfour
declaration. After the war, Palestine
was assigned to UK and according to the Balfour declaration, promised the
Jewish homeland in the mandated territory.
Although Arab leaders were initially willing to give Jews Palestine if
the rest of the Arab states were free, the Arabs living in Palestine heavily
objected Jewish immigration. There were
many riots in the territory. In 1937,
British recommended partition.
After the holocaust and the grand
massacre of Jews by Hitler, the need for a Jewish homeland became increasingly
unbearable. The British could not come
up with a solution and so handled the whole matter to the United Nations.